Since then he has been back playing for Edinburgh in the Guinness PRO14 and trained with Scotland last week, but his future lies away from the Capital.

Cockerill said: “John won’t be staying. He is the same as a lot of other guys, we have a lot of young guys coming through and financially we need to spread our costs.

“We have to make sure we are getting value out of our budget. We have guys like Jamie Ritchie and Luke Crosbie coming through who can both play at seven while Hamish [Watson] is first choice there for Scotland.